Jonna Perrillo is Assistant Professor of English and has served as Director of the West Texas Writing Project since 2005. Her book manuscript, Uncivil Rights: Teachers, Professionalism, and Civil Rights from the Great Depression to No Child Left Behind, is currently under review. In it, she examines the ways in which teacher unionism and civil rights activism intersected over issues of teacher and school quality across the twentieth century. In addition, her work has been published in English Education and the History of Education Quarterly. In 2004, she was the recipient of the Henry Barnard Prize for the best graduate student essay in the field of education history. In 2010, was named the annual Albert Shanker Research Fellow by the American Federation of Teachers.

Her research and teaching focus on teachers’ professional development and teacher quality, professional writing for teachers, building communities of practice, and school reform discourse and policies. She teaches a range of courses on English teaching methods for pre-service and practicing teachers and graduate seminars on professional writing and developing teacher inquiry projects.






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